Your position as the commissioner of the National Football League is a powerful one. You probably get to decide what goes on those rings. You can touch the Vince Lombardi trophy. You might even be able to touch Eli Manning. Hear me out. I think that your position might even be more powerful than you have ever dreamed. You could save the country by keeping the GOP out of office. Right, right, I understand: I’m just some college student. You probably get tons of these letters. But please, take a minute to listen to what I have to say.

A couple of days ago I wrote a piece about the Democrats being the big winners on Super Tuesday. They did win, I won’t back down from that, but I was maybe just a little over-excited. I was caught up in the moment; sue me. I wasn’t anticipating that Mitt Romney would drop out—excuse me, “suspend his campaign“—only two days after the biggest night in national politics, especially after dumping $35 million of his own personal fortune into the race.

With Romney gone, we’re already seeing a new enthusiasm from John McCain to capture the conservative vote he so desperately needs to even have a chance of winning the election come November. As Republican leaders attempt to unite their party, whispers are starting to spread of a new weapon that just might work. I am afraid that they could be right.

So you are our only hope. I beg you to hand your position over. It might just be the only way to stop the GOP.

You see, those whispers — that weapon — it’s all centered around who John McCain will pick as his running mate. All of the talk recently has been Mike Huckabee this, Mike Huckabee that. The former Arkansas governor shocked everyone when he took five states in the Super Tuesday primaries. He’s a genuine, charismatic guy.

It doesn’t seem to matter that he doesn’t believe in evolution or that he thinks humans walked the earth with the dinosaurs. With Huckabee at the forefront of media coverage, not many people are listening to the whispers yet, but I am sure they will grow loud in the coming days. They sound something like this: Condoleezza Rice.

This race doesn’t have anything to do with gender, they say. This race doesn’t have anything to with, well, race. But the exit polls are continuously fed to you on any network news channel: The blacks love Obama; the women, Hillary.

If you pair an old, white prisoner-of-war with a relatively young black woman, you’ve covered almost every base. How many young black women do you know that also happen to be conservative Republicans? That’s what I thought. The GOP needs to convince Rice to run alongside McCain; she might just be his only hope. If nothing else, she would certainly shut Rush Limbaugh up. They have a past, and he’s obsessed.

If we’re lucky, she might be tired of politics and the end of this term might be the end of a long run in offices under George Bush, but the only way to be sure is to offer her your job as NFL Commissioner. In 2004, let me remind you, we were in the middle of a war and Condoleezza was serving as the 20^th United States National Security Advisor. You’d think she would be busy; you’d think she would be taking her job pretty seriously. Instead she made it quite clear that if offered the job of commissioner, she would snatch it up in a second. It’s the only thing she wants more than to eat the beating heart of Osama bin Laden.

If something doesn’t happen immediately to quell these rumors, I’m afraid we’re going to have Condi vs. Oprah in October. And, while Condi may not have a book club or her own magazine, she knows how to speak five languages and is well-versed in that little issue McCain somehow has convinced his supporters is the paramount issue of the entire 21^st century: radical Islamic extremism.

While Oprah might be more terrifying than the prisoners Condi has had locked up in Guantanamo, she doesn’t look as good in heels. McCain isn’t getting the Southern votes right now, and you know as well as I do that the Republicans of Appalachia and the deep South will vote for anything if it knows how to fire a gun and wears a short enough skirt. Please, Roger Goodell, save us.

Sincerely,
Nicholas Jackson

From a story in the New York Times:

“She [Hillary] has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out,” said one Democratic superdelegate who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. “The campaign is starting to come to terms with that.”

Bill Clinton led two rallies earlier tonight at his wife’s headquarters–too many people showed up for him to speak to everyone at one so he spoke inside to hundreds, if not thousands, of supporters who had been waiting for hours and then climbed on top of a Ford and essentially repeated his speech for everyone else outside.

Here’s a two-minute clip from the middle of Clinton’s speech. I didn’t edit it and it was taken from a small camera held over my head while aggressive fans elbowed me from both sides as they tried to push closer to the front of the room.

Naturally, Wonkette has played this off as “one of those misogynist Russian ‘ha ha the woman lacks a penis’ jokes.” I think the best response to come from this is courtesy a blog reader who thinks ‘Get Head for Hillary!’ should be someone’s next campaign slogan. I don’t know though; it didn’t work out so well for Bill.

On Tuesday night, the Chicago Reader published a blog entry that built on Spett’s column, stating:

[Spett's] not alone. Faculty sources who prefer not to be named for obvious reasons tell me that some of them suspected the quotes were bogus, but beyond grousing among themselves they did nothing to act on their suspicions. As far as they know, Spett was the first person to confront the dean. “There are people on the faculty who are very nervous,” one source said.

The two pieces have been picked up by Romenesko in the past hour and will certainly bring more attention to this issue in the coming days.

Ever since John Lavine’s less than typical promotion to dean of the Medill School of Journalism took place in 2006, there have been several articles concerning the ability of the ex-director of the Media Management Center to run a J-school. Maybe in advertising it’s OK, but in journalism, we don’t fabricate quotations. Is the dean about to learn a lesson from a proactive student?

I’m sure the episode will be more than full of strike jokes and probably be about as entertaining as any of the more recent SNL episodes, which is to say not at all, but Fey’s hosting is a pretty significant event. She has never hosted the program but has strong ties to it nonetheless. She joined as a writer in 1997 and two years later was the show’s first female head writer. She left in the middle of 2006, at the end of the 31st season, to develop 30 Rock.

Because NBC doesn’t like to share anything on YouTube, here is a clip of Tina Fey at the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival performing her famous Weekend Update sketch from SNL.

A TIME poll that came in yesterday shows that were Obama to win the nomination, he could beat McCain 48% to 41%. If Clinton has the nomination, they would tie at 46% each. Regardless, the poll also shows that, nationally, Democrats favor Clinton to win the nomination by a margin of 48% to 42%.

From the article:

The difference, says Mark Schulman, CEO of Abt SRBI, which conducted the poll for TIME, is that “independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton But they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator.” Independents, added Schulman, “are a key battleground.”

Superdelegates tend to be party officials and other elected politicians who are not legally bound to vote for a particular candidate at the convention. Because neither Obama nor Clinton have a strong majority in delegates so far, the superdelegates are going to be absolutely important if the nomination isn’t tied up pre-convention.

Currently five of Connecticut’s super-delegates are supporting Obama, one is with Clinton and the remaining five are undecided.

At this point in the game, Lieberman isn’t particularly helping McCain. All of the just-right-of-center Republicans are already on McCain’s side and, as Romney’s farewell speech earlier this afternoon suggested, it’s the conservatives he really needs to win over in order to win against the Democrats. Lieberman grinning in the background isn’t going to help this cause, even if he is always sporting a nice red tie.

It’s more than clear now that John McCain will be the front-runner for the GOP. All of the pundit talk is centered on who will run alongside him as VP. Will it be Huckabee? Who cares right now? All of the talk is about the Democrats. On their side, everyone was focused on how close the numbers were. Hillary won a handful of big states; Obama won everything else. You know this already. What most people aren’t talking about is how the Democrats were the biggest winners of the night.

Regardless of whether you support Clinton or Obama, I’m willing to bet that one of your reasons is that you don’t support George Bush and, after that disastrous second term, you won’t put another Republican in the White House for at least four more years. Well, here’s some good news. Hillary fans: Stop worrying that your girl only beat Obama in her home state with half of the percentage points by which he carried Illinois. Don’t worry that your candidate doesn’t have the money rolling in. Obama fans: So the Oprah thing didn’t work out as well as we had hoped, it’ll be alright. Look at the numbers.

Of course, the Republicans have yet to stand behind one candidate–or even two–and thus, their base isn’t so enthusiastic right now, but keep in mind that in 2004 George Bush won 10 of the states that were up for grabs last night. In all but three (Alabama, Arizona and Utah), the Democrats had a higher turnout than the Republicans. Take a closer look at those three states: Arizona is John McCain’s home state; Utah, Mormon country; and in Alabama, the split was 51% to 49%.

It may only be February but I’m ready to call it right now. Obama, Hillary, I don’t know, but there will be a Democratic President taking the oath come January 20th and I think that’s something we all can be excited about.

Ok, so it doesn’t actually talk. But if it could, it would definitely speak Swahili; Giraffes are native to that section along the Indian Ocean in East Africa where all of a handful of people actually take the time to learn Swahili and even then they only do it to, you know, communicate with other people. It’s the part, Patrick, I know you will never visit. Making your mid-term useless; get back to blogging. Regardless, use this guy for inspiration and, when you get an A, I want an apology for doubting my cute animal-finding skills.